Paul Gauguin Quotes

The cyclone ends. The sun returns; the lofty coconut trees lift up their plumes again; man does likewise. The great anguish is over; joy has returned; the sea smiles like a child.

I shut my eyes in order to see.

Color! What a deep and mysterious language, the language of dreams.

I have come to an unalterable decision - to go and live forever in Polynesia. Then I can end my days in peace and freedom, without thoughts of tomorrow and this eternal struggle against idiots.

Color which, like music, is a matter of vibrations, reaches what is most general and therefore most indefinable in nature: its inner power.

Art is either revolution or plagiarism

Oh yes! he loved yellow, this good Vincent, this painter from Holland - those glimmers of sunlight rekindled his soul, that abhorred the fog, that needed the warmth.

We never really know what stupidity is until we have experimented on ourselves.

Life is hardly more than a fraction of a second. Such a little time to prepare oneself for eternity!

I am leaving in order to have peace and quiet. To be rid of the influence of civilization. I only want to do simple, very simple art and to be able to do that, I have to immerse myself in virgin nature, see no one but savages, live their life, with no other thought in my mind but to render, the way a child would, the concepts formed in my brain and to do this with the aid of nothing but the primitive means of art, the only means that are good and true.

Take care not to step on the foot of a learned idiot. His bite is incurable.

Stressing output is the key to improving productivity, while looking to increase activity can result in just the opposite.

My eyes close and uncomprehendingly see the dream in the infinite space that stretches away, elusive, before me.

Nature has mysterious infinities and imaginative power. It is always varying the productions it offers to us. The artist himself is one of nature's means.

I have tried to establish the right to dare everything.

I sit at my door, smoking a cigarette and sipping my absinthe, and I enjoy every day without a care in the world

By the combination of lines and colors, under the pretext of some motif taken from nature, I create symphonies and harmonies that represent nothing absolutely real in the ordinary sense of the word but are intended to give rise to thoughts as music does.

What still concerns me the most is: am I on the right track, am I making progress, am I making mistakes in art?

Oh mysterious world of all light, thou hast made a light shine within me, and I have grown in admiration of thy antique beauty, which is the immemorial youth of nature.

for Christ's sake, were the mountains blue, then chuck on some blue and don't go telling me that it was a blue a bit like this or like that, it was blue wasn't it? Good - make them blue and that's enough!

Art = a mad search for individualism.

The history of modern art is also the history of the progressive loss of art's audience. Art has increasingly become the concern of the artist and the bafflement of the public.

Let everything about you breathe the calm and peace of the soul.

Life being what it is, one dreams of revenge.

I am a great artist and I know it. It's because of what I am that I have endured so much suffering, so as to pursue my vocation, otherwise I would consider myself a rogue - which is what many people think I am, for that matter.

Do not finish your work too much. An impression is not sufficiently durable for its first freshness to survive a belated search for infinite detail; in this way you let the lava grow cool.

Wherever I go I need a period of incubation so that I may learn the essence of nature, which never wishes to be understood or yield herself.

Do not copy nature. Art is an abstraction. Rather, bring your art forth by dreaming in front of her and think more of creation.

And here in my isolation I can grow stronger. Poetry seems to come of itself, without effort, and I need only let myself dream a little while painting to suggest it.

Proficiency in art is a contract with your self and the empowerment of your self. Not all of us demand or even desire proficiency, but for those who do it's necessary to temper the influence of groups. And while some artists think history is bunk, the historical evidence is overwhelming: "In my isolation I grow stronger."

If I did what has already been done, I would be a plagiarist and would consider myself unworthy; so I do something different and people call me a scoundrel. I'd rather be a scoundrel than a plagiarist!

The flat sound of my wooden clogs on the cobblestones, deep, hollow and powerful, is the note I seek in my painting.

A young man who is unable to commit a folly is already an old man.

Whatever may happen the sun will rise tomorrow as it rose to-day, beneficent and serene.

Today one can dare anything, and, furthermore, nobody is surprised.

It is useless to advise solitude for everyone; one must be strong enough to endure it and to work alone.

Do not copy nature too much. Art is an abstraction.

If you see a tree as blue, then make it blue.

In order to produce something new, you have to return to the original source, to the childhood of mankind.

Life has no meaning unless one lives it with a will, at least to the limit of one's will. Virtue, good, evil are nothing but words, unless one takes them apart in order to build something with them; they do not win their true meaning until one knows how to apply them.

Go on working, freely and furiously, you will make progress and sooner or later your worth will be recognised, if you have any.

One's state of mind is three-quarters of what counts, so it has to be carefully nurtured if you want to do something great and lasting.

Life has no meaning unless one lives it with a will, at least to the limit of one's will.

It is the eye of ignorance that assigns a fixed and unchangeable color to every object; beware of this stumbling block.

Civilization is what makes you sick.

The great artist is a formulation of the greatest intelligence: he is the recipient of sensations which are the most delicate and consequently the most invisible expressions of the brain.

The public wants to understand and learn in a single day, a single minute, what the artist has spent years learning.

A meter of green is greener than a centimeter.

Stay firmly in your path and dare; be wild two hours a day!

There is always a heavy demand for fresh mediocrity. In every generation the least cultivated taste has the largest appetite.